Hexmapping...

...feels good.

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Playing Outside the Rules

The following is an excerpt from the GM's section of my work in progress, big-scale, spear-em-up RPG, Thousand Spears. Although it's part of this game I can see it applying to most systems.

Playing Outside the Rules

The most important thing to remember about Thousand Spears is that it is an RPG and not a wargame. You could play it as a wargame, but if you do you’ll be missing out on what makes RPGs so special. In an RPG the GM and players are able to step out of the rules of the game to do, quite literally, anything.

As the GM it's up to you to maintain a balance of playing within the rules and playing outside the rules. This doesn't mean breaking the rules, but is everything the players do that isn't directly linked to a rule. For example, using an individual's Ability to raise some attack dice is playing firmly within the rules, but describing how the archers are pouring arrows onto the enemy is playing outside the rules.

In the majority of games more time will be spent outside the rules than inside them. There are no rules for your Inheritor giving a rousing speech to his men, deciding how to persuade the dock-master to loan him a ship or deciding whether the mysterious Ysorn can be trusted to keep a promise. The temptation may be to play out these situations as Trials or Challenges, but it's important to remember you're not bound to using a rule for everything.

The rules are there for a reason, and there is great fun to be had using them to act out huge battles, dramatic one-on-one duels and life or death journeys across hostile landscapes. Just stop each time you're about to step back into the rules to consider whether you really need to.

Fantasy Boyscouts and Resurrecting Old Projects

Been a while since my last post, so time for a quick update on what I've been working on. 

• Working on Lookouts adaptation of The Adventurer's Tale after being truly inspired by one of Penny Arcade's latest projects.
• Being wowed by another awesome map from the Tao of D&D
• Scouring my contacts for someone with good pdf layout skills and a little free time they're willing to offer up to help me finally turn A Wanderer's Romance into a nice pdf
• Realising more and more that Greywulf speaks a lot of sense
• Considering bringing Inheritance back onto a front burner to see if I can improve it significantly and eventually have a completed document for mechanics and fluff

It's the last of these things I want to talk about today.

Back when I spoke about Inheritance in January there were two main areas I felt needed improvement. Firstly the setting needed to be made more accessible and presented alongside the rules in the document rather than seperate in a wiki. I have an idea for how to do this, but it can wait for now while I deal with a more mechanical issue. This second problem was that combat options mostly consisted of "attack" or specialist options like disarm, grapple, charge and so on. I wanted to present more options for character that just wanted to hack away. In addition to this issue there was often a rather high "whiff factor", which I've come to hate in games. Here's how I plan to tackle both of these, without going too far into specific Inheritance mechanics.

Attack Focuses

At the start of a character's turn they may choose an Attack Focus if they wish. This will provide both a bonus and a penalty in combat.

Speed: The character gains a +1PL bonus to their Initiative roll but suffers -1PL to hit on all attacks.

Damage: The character gains a +1PL bonus to Damage rolls but a -1PL penalty to their Initiative roll.

Accuracy: The characters gains a +1PL bonus to hit on all attacks but suffers -1PL to Damage rolls

The desired effect of this is that if a character is whiffing a lot in combat, be it through missing or being unable to hurt a target, they can shift their focus as required. On the other hand, it needn't slow down play as the DM is advised to not use them for NPCs and Monsters and even the players can ignore them if they wish. 

Bring on a playtest!

Lessons Learned from Inheritance

Each game I write benefits from the experience gained in writing the previous ones. A Wanderer's Romance is my most recent game so should, in theory, make use of lessons learned from this experience.

Inheritance was the first of my games I really got to a playable level and it's still the longest game I've written to date. While I still like the game there were a lot of mistakes I made with it that I wouldn't make again.

Long Combats with one type of attack are not fun.

For many types of character in Inheritance they had few combat options besides attacking with their weapon. Other options were there such as focusing on evasion and special attacks such as grappling, charging and disarming but they were rarely used and generally unexciting. In learning this lesson I wanted to give a useful alternative to attacking each turn, which became Focusing. This gives you not only a pretty nice bonus to your next attack but triggers special abilities in various styles. This addition, along with the variation within combat styles, has made combat in A Wanderer's Romance much more active for the player than in Inheritance.

In addition combat is much shorter, being between only two opponents in the vast majority of cases. The player is always either acting or reacting to their opponent and a hit tends to end the fight much more often than in Inheritance. This gave us fast, active combat. Much more fun.

Quick NPC generation can be your absolute saviour.

To make a standard human NPC in Inheritance you took the basic human template and chose two "Good Thing" upgrades for them. That's all you need, mechanically, for the merchant your players suddenly need statted up. When running the game this has saved me a great deal of time in comparison to something like D&D or GURPS where I'd be more likely to give in and grab a pre-generated NPC. Pre-gens are great but can't always give you what you need.

For A Wanderer's Romance creating a new character involve dividing six points between their four elements, choosing one or more Specialities and Styles for them and giving them a philosophy. This isn't quite as fast as Inheritance but it's still something I've been able to do on the fly without players noticing. Very handy.

Players aren't as interested in your setting as you are.

I still love the Inheritance setting. I still want to draw up the whole world map and draw trade routes, settlements, map out a full timeline of events. However, I know that this exercise would be completely separate to any useful writing I do, as only the minority of players will ever really delve deeply into your setting. With A Wanderer's Romance I took some notice of 4e's Points of Light setting guidance. I liked the fact that it was a framework for groups to create their own world in. Worlds would be different but still adhere to the feel the designers felt suited the game and, importantly for me, be consistent with the mechanics.

In A Wanderer's Romance there's little the players need to know about the setting before they play. These points are covered in around two paragraphs highlighted in coloured boxes and the rest is down relatively common knowledge of the game's influences and the GM's own contributions.